Stephanie Danler - Sweetbitter

“Jesus, Skip, will you shut up and make a pretty little line.” Ariel scrolled through her iPod. “Then we’re done.”

“Are you high?” I asked Ariel. I turned to Will and Sasha. “Wait, are you high? Is anyone high?” I made the line the way she taught me, about the length of a cigarette, evenly distributed with sharp, tapered ends. “I’m high. ”

Ariel passed me a Negroni and it tasted like cough syrup. “Medicine. Hey guys, I think I hate my job.” They laughed. “No I’m serious, isn’t it kinda depressing and dirty in there lately?”

“What you think, everyone look, Alice just wake up and oh fuck, no wonderland.”

“Maybe you should hit the pause button every now and then,” Will said, and I turned away from him.

“I’m putting on your favorite song, Skip.”

Ariel was aggressive about music. She had made me a few CD mixes, the depths of my ignorance presented in sixteen tracks. It never ended well. For her, the enjoyment of music was contingent on its obscurity. Once people knew about it, she discarded it, moved on. And yet she was always trying to educate me. Every time I told her I liked a song she had shown me, she put on a disappointed smirk and said, “You would. ” Which I thought had been the point.

“You don’t know my favorite song,” I said. When I caught her eyes they were like rain-washed windows I couldn’t see inside. Worry fluttered through me and I took another drink.

“No LCD,” Terry said, hitting his hand on the bar for emphasis.

“I will shoot myself, Ari,” said Will.

“Fuck you, fuck your mothers, if you talk shit on James Murphy I will fucking kill you.”

The song came on. “Heartbeats.” I clapped my hands.

“Oh, I do like this song!”

“Why you squeal like a piggy?”

“Sasha, come on, it’s my song.” I moved my shoulders and shut my eyes, dizzy, white cloudbursts inside my lids. I pulled Sasha off the stool. I swung my hair in front of my face like Ariel taught me, my body dilated under the water of the synthetic bass. It was an apathy dance. I heard Ariel singing, and when Will took my hand and spun me, I smiled, lip-synching.

To call for hands of above, to lean on…wouldn’t be good enough for me, oh.

All the movement stopped and I looked toward the door. Vivian stood, wobbling, cautious. I waved and looked at Ariel, who had a glass in her hand. It went flying by my face and into the wall next to Vivian.

The sound came seconds later. I had already watched it explode and shower the floor, no snapping, nothing clean, full disintegration. During the delay in sound I covered my eyes.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“You’re out, Ari,” Terry yelled. “God fucking damn it.”

Vivian looked bored. Ariel grabbed a handful of straws and threw them before Will grabbed her by the shoulders.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I heard someone call out above the music. The song ended and I realized it was me. Vivian walked to the bar, not looking at Ariel, and sighed as she brought up the hand broom.

“Sorry, Terry,” she said.

“Oh, she’s sorry, Terry ?” Ariel wrestled as Will held her arms down.

“Let’s go, string bean, party’s over.” Sasha grabbed her purse and Will picked her up and went to the door. Sasha waved to someone out the window. “Oh and look, Victor-baby is here.”

“I know you,” Ariel yelled at Vivian, her voice shot and guttural, “I know everything about you.”

—

NEARLY FIVE A.M. in the park. A frigid night that should have been blown over by sleep. Empty bottles rattled in the gutters, darkness lay thick as wax in the trees. We couldn’t get Ariel to do anything but pace and rage and smoke. Sasha and Victor took off immediately. I thought, What’s stopping me from leaving? Why can’t I grab a taxi too? Do all the single people have to wait it out together?

Vivian was a sex addict — undiagnosed, but Ariel was familiar with the signs. Vivian was illiterate. She was tits and ass, barely queer. Ariel was embarrassed to be seen with her. Vivian had used her. For what was unclear.

“Take the down pill, babe,” I said. I smoked with her for solidarity, but I was sick, sweaty, shivering, coming down hard.

“She’s right, Ari, where’s the Xanax?”

Ariel took two pills without stopping her tirade. She lit another cigarette before the first was finished. And just when I thought I was going to freeze to death on a bench in Union Square, her drugs kicked in.

She stumbled. Will grabbed her and her head dropped down to her chest.

“She took too much,” he said. Ariel slapped him and started laughing.

“Like too much too much? Like we’re going to the hospital?”

“No, just difficult-to-handle too much.”

He put her down on the bench and we sat on either side of her. Her eyes were closed, her head cocked to the side. I put her hood on her and Will and I looked at each other. I remembered how delicately he’d touched my face when we kissed and felt repulsed and then sad.

“Thank you for being nice to me,” I said.

He lit a cigarette and looked across the park, not taking the bait.

“Does this happen?” I asked.

“It has happened. It doesn’t happen all the time. She has all these meds. It gets complicated.”

“I see that. You think Vivian is cheating?”

“No,” he said loudly into Ariel’s ear. But then he met my eyes and shrugged.

“Sucks.”

We looked at her, looked at each other, then out at the park. I lifted my feet when I heard the rats. Neither of us wanted to deal with it. But I owed Will for getting me home safely more than once. We all owed Will, really. He never stopped watching over us.

“I’ll take her. My place is closer to her place, she can walk in the morning.”

“Aren’t you like fifth-floor walk-up?”

“She’s going to have to walk.” I tapped her and she didn’t move. “You’re going to walk, Ari.”

Wind came through the park and I could hear the trees bending, creaking.

“I haven’t heard that in so long,” I said, hushed, looking up. “They are speaking like real trees.”

Ariel walked but her eyes were closed. I guided her by our hooked arms. A cab materialized going south on Union Square West, a beacon of hope. The driver saw us and rolled down his window.

“No puke,” he said. He had a drooping, ashen face, as if he’d been sleeping. I tried to open the doors but they were locked.

“Come on, she’s fine.”

He looked her up and down and Ariel said, “Fuck you.”

“See, she’s fine!” I said. “Please, I have cash, extra tip, por favor.”

Ariel took up the far two seats. As soon as we settled in her head was on my shoulder. I held her hand and kissed it. The lit store windows turned SoHo into a lunar landscape, nothing human for miles. I watched each block present itself to me, and I thought, Who lives here?

When we turned onto Delancey, Ariel’s head fell onto my breast. When I picked her head up, she kissed me. She was so soft. Kissing her felt like trying to stand on a mossy stone in a river, our lips ran over each other with no traction. Her hair drifted up as if we were underwater. After a minute I became aware of it, and I started trying to kiss her back, performing, asking myself if I liked it. But for the first few seconds all I knew was her mouth.

I couldn’t lose myself in it again. I let it go over the bridge. There was no groping, just the fine edges of teeth and a feathery tongue, so yielding. I tilted my face down and told the driver to take the first exit. His eyes were locked on us in the rearview mirror.

“You have beautiful lips,” I said, pulling a few strands of her hair from my mouth. She didn’t open her eyes.